Beloved Japanese author Haruki Murakami, speaking to in 2014, relayed that the intention behind his short story collection Men Without Women – mischievously lifting its title from Ernest Hemingway – was to convey, “in a word, isolation, and what it means emotionally.”
It’s a theme expanded upon with tender, patient generosity in prolific director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s ravishing new film about the aftermath of grief, Drive My Car. Adapted with co-writer Takamasa Oe from the short story of the same name in Men Without Women, it’s the sort of gently unfurled film that overwhelms you with quiet power over the course of three barely noticed hours.
Taking home three awards from this year’s Cannes Film Festival, including Best Screenplay, it will almost certainly be nominated for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars. [UPDATE: the film scored a brace of , and won Best International Feature Film.]
Speaking to Hamaguchi via a translator, I wonder where one begins with the task of expanding a short from such a highly esteemed author?
Prolific ‘Drive My Car’ director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi. Source: Culture Entertainment
“When you tangle with literary works, the thing that you have to be aware of is that you’re going to try and translate the literary-ness of the text to the screen,” he offers enthusiastically. “The thing about Haruki Murakami’s stories and dialogue is that the characters that he writes, and the things that they say in these stories, aren’t necessarily what people would stay as dialogue in real life.”
The art of film writing, then, is to translate these literary utterances into, “lines that are reminiscent of the text, that are also not of the text,” Hamaguchi notes. “Then you have to write it in such a way that you also fill in a lot of the story that’s not in the text, but in a way that you don’t betray Murakami’s writing.”
A story told in distinct parts, Drive My Car’s latter segments centre on an unusual relationship. Theatre director Yûsuke Kafuku – played with stoicism by Hidetoshi Nishijima, who voiced Honjô in the original cast of Studio Ghibli film The Wind Rises – finds himself cast adrift emotionally after an unexpected tragedy.
Misaki (Tôko Miura) driving Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a reluctant passenger, in ‘Drive My Car’. Source: Culture Entertainment
Act two sees him preparing to stage a multilingual production of Russian literary titan Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya as part of a local theatrical festival in Hiroshima, that great city on which history hangs heavy.
Kafuku is annoyed that the festival organisers insist on providing him with an assigned driver Misaki Watari (Tôko Miura). Somewhat begrudgingly giving over the keys to his red Saab (switched up from yellow in the source material), their daily journey to rehearsals gradually sets them on a pathway towards opening up in ways previously locked to them.
“The thing is that you have these characters who do not offer up their story voluntarily,” Hamaguchi says of the challenges of tracing the emotional awakening of two guarded souls. “They are equally in need of sharing their stories, but they don’t. So you actually have to bring in elements to prompt them to converse… to have a reason to share much more than the silence.”
A film composed of many beautiful moments, one such event that draws them closer together involves an understated dinner party hosted by the play’s dramaturg (Jin Deyon) and a mute cast member (Sonia Yuan) who performs her role in Vanya via sign language. Another involves their reactions to the bad behaviour of trouble-making actor Kôshi Takatsuki (Masaki Okada), an angry young man who rails at his casting against type as the ageing Vanya, and who shares an unusual link with Kafuku.
Masaki Okada (left) and Hidetoshi Nishijima. Source: Culture Entertainment
Drive My Car exalts in the glorious complications of language, how we communicate with one another (or not), and also luxuriates in the silences between what is said. “I wasn’t even conscious of how much silence there would be between Kafuku and Misaki,” Hamaguchi reveals, noting that he allowed the emotional beats the time they needed, informing the film’s lilting rhythms.
“Fifteen minutes in a movie is a long time, but 15 minutes in real life is actually not that long, and it’s very rare that people’s relationship to one another changes in that time,” he says. “If you want any amount of realism, that change of one state to another takes as long as it takes. It’s how these relationships within the text are hanging off one another that makes cinema for me.”
It’s also a film in which the presence of those who are notably absent is also felt. Reika Kirishima delivers a riveting turn as Kafuku’s wife Oto, a writer who draws inspiration from their passionate love-making, in the film’s opening act. The couple are wounded from a terrible loss many years before, and yet more sorrow is to come. But even after Oto’s story is done, she’s there, still, in a disembodied way when Kafuku and Misaki drive to work each day. He insists that Misaki play a cassette in which Oto narrates the lines of Vanya, leaving ghostly spaces where the lead role should speak.
“The absence of those who came before actually prompts these characters to move towards a resolution,” Hamaguchi says. “And so that brings us to Chekov and his lines which carry so much meaning… there is something that overlaps, in terms of intent. The speaker is gone, but the meaning remains.”
Filming on Drive My Car began in March 2020 and was completed one year later, with many pandemic-related interruptions along the way and new processes to navigate the shoot safely. I wonder, then, if the strange times we find ourselves in have layered even more meaning into a film about dislocation and how we navigate reconnecting?
Hidetoshi Nishijima gives a resonant performance. Source: Culture Entertainment
“The disconnect was there before the pandemic came along,” Hamaguchi says. “It was hidden, but understood, that that particular disconnect between people is a perennial problem. And it’s going to go on [after the pandemic], and it will be something that I will be dealing with in my future work. But it was always there, it will always be there, and I do think it is very important to address that it exists in our world. The pandemic merely heightened our sense of it.”
Note: all images © 2021 Culture Entertainment, Bitters End, Nekojarashi, Quaras, NIPPON SHUPPAN HANBAI, Bungeishunju, L’ESPACE VISION, C&I, The Asahi Shimbun Company
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Watch 'Drive My Car'
Monday 27 March, 8:30pm on SBS World Movies / Now streaming at SBS On Demand
MA15+
Japan, 2021
Genre: Drama
Language: Japanese
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Starring: Hidetoshi Nishijima, Toko Miura, Masaki Okada, Reika Kirishima, Park Yu-rim
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